


Gasping For Oxygen

by a-blog-against-team-cap (MyaAni)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Drinking, Gen, Major Character Suicide, Not Steve Friendly, Not Wanda Friendly, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Sleeping Pills, Suicide, The Raft Prison (Marvel), Tony Stark Needs a Hug, alcoholism (implied), but doesn't get one, it's true i am an annoying tony stan, not Team Cap positive, not team Cap friendly, written by an 'annoying tony stan' lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 04:59:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13629105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyaAni/pseuds/a-blog-against-team-cap
Summary: Every time he drifts off to sleep, he sees it again. Barnes, strangling his mother as he stares at Tony.And Steve’s standing off to the side, telling Tony “Don’t you see? This is the right thing to do."





	Gasping For Oxygen

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by  this tumblr post 

Every time he drifts off to sleep, he sees it again. Barnes, strangling his mother as he stares at Tony. Steve’s there too. He’s choosing Bucky here too. Even when Barnes is Hydra. Even when his precious Bucky is slowly removing the life from Maria Stark’s lungs.  
Steve’s standing off to the side, telling Tony “Don’t you see? This is the right thing. One day, you’ll understand. Bucky’s not in control! None of this is his fault. It’s you.” That’s right before he smashes his shield, shining and all-too-perfect into the arc reactor, and Tony is back in Siberia, frozen and unable to move, lungs straining for oxygen against the bent metal. 

And then he wakes up. Shivering no matter how high the thermostat is set, unable to erase the feeling of ice from his fevered skin. He knows it isn’t real. And that it isn’t Barnes’s fault. But he can’t shake the anger he harbors under his over-pale skin.  


And he’s so tired. It’s months after the so-called Civil War ended, and he hasn’t slept more than a few minutes since. So inevitably he falls back into a restless slumber, only to see his mom die again. And again. And again. It repeats over and over, and he can’t do anything about it.  


And oh he tries. He starts with sleeping meds, cramming a handful of pills down his throat and passing out on the couch. That’s a mistake. It just means he’s stuck there. In Siberia, the shield hit him again and again, until his already weakened rib cage gives way and his lungs collapse. But still he’s there and Steve still slams the shield into him. Even as he feels he’s dying, Steve shows no sign of stopping.  


Steve leans over and whispers “It’s all your fault. Why didn’t you do more?” And he knows it’s true. Everything’s his fault, all of it. The Accords, the war, Ultron. So he just lies there, until Steve raises his shield to bash in his head. He doesn’t even try to raise his arms up to protect his face before his brains are spilled on the icy ground and he starts awake.

 

He never makes that mistake again.

Next time, he tries to drink himself into a stupor. If he’s drugged out of his mind, maybe he won’t recognize his mom as Barnes strangles the life out of her. But that doesn’t work either. All the alcohol does is make it more vivid. Like watching a movie in colour after only ever seeing black and white.  


And when he wakes, he’s done. It’s been so long, and there’s nothing he can do. Every time he finally passes out, he’s forced to relive the most awful moment in his life, and he can’t deal with it any more. Can’t watch his mother murdered one more time. It’s all too much. Trembling with repressed exhaustion, he climbs inside the new suit, taking it for it’s one and only flight. He tells Friday he’s sorry, and to tell the Spiderling that too, then puts her on mute as he climbs into the sky.

No one's looking up. But if they were been, they would have seen a small explosion, far above them as the great Tony Stark’s final flight ended. 

Friday sends out a distress call as soon as she’s placed on mute. But it’s too little, too late. It takes Rhodey too long to get in his suit now, and everyone else is scattered worldwide. Guilt haunts him forever, that he wasn’t fast enough, and that he hadn’t seen anything wrong. He feels like he just let his best friend die.  


Pepper still isn’t speaking to Tony, and for the second time, doesn’t answer the phone as he flies towards his death. She feels awful forever, having failed Tony once as he sacrificed himself, and again when he was flying towards death willingly, a time when she might have saved him.  


When Friday’s voice urgently overrides Karen’s, Peter calls Tony. Once. Then twice. Then a third time. Again and again, but each time Tony dismisses his calls. He sees the explosion from miles away, back in Queens. He’ll never stop regretting not being at the tower more.  


Vision is out, trying to ‘live a regular life’ when Friday reaches him. He flies after his creator, but even he can only go so fast. As he watches Mark LII explode from only a few hundred feet away he screams for the first time, a noise of desperation and anguish.  


When the news reaches Natasha, she maintains a stoic face. She’s halfway around the world, hiding out in Russia. If she shows what she feels, she could blow her cover. But Tony was a good man, and she knows that he didn’t deserve this, and feels the red stain her ledger further, blaming herself for betraying and abandoning him.  


T’Challa regrets the death of a good man. He finds out in the days after, as the rest of the world does, through news articles, and tabloid scandal stories. He hates that he never pushed a friendship with Tony, instead relenting when he pushed him away.  


When Scott Lang finds out, he wonders what could have broken such a stubborn, smart-ass of a man. But then he remembers the bruises on Tony’s face at the airport, and the look in his eyes when he saw Steve. He always wonders if he was the straw that broke the camel’s back.  


Sam Wilson sees the pixelated explosion on the news, and he curses himself for not noticing what a deep pit Stark had fallen into. It was his his job, for Christ’s sake! And he had followed Steve as they pushed a broken man over the edge, and sent Stark to Steve, who kicked him while he was down. He never forgets Tony, and his mistake.  


Clint hears from Scott. Guilty whispers uttered in the dead of night. He blames Steve. Decides that the culpability lies inexorably on Steve’s shoulders. It’s the only way he knows how to cope- if he blames himself he’ll fall apart. He leaves the Rogue Avengers and spends the rest of his life hiding in poverty, hopping from one place to the next, trying to find somewhere the memories can’t reach him.  


Wanda watches Stark’s death with satisfaction from a rooftop near Avengers Tower. She’d got inside his head years ago, and that seed had never left, instead festering. Finally, Stark felt all of the pain she had for all those years. Her only regret was that he was gone, so he couldn’t hurt anymore.  


Steve hears about Tony’s death online. He doesn’t really care. He writes it off as Tony being unstable, and never once considers his role in the genius’s devastation.  


Without Tony, the Accords are put into place. General Ross goes unchecked, and they become the cage that Steve originally feared. The Rogue Avengers are corralled and forced to sign. None of them go very long without breaking the tight restrictions, and they end up back in the Raft on various charges.  


Bucky is kept in cryostasis for another twelve years. Without Tony Stark, it takes them much longer to derive a method to remove the triggers from his brain. After he wakes, and is better, he inquires about everyone else. After hearing that Steve, Maximoff, Wilson, and Lang are locked away, Barton is missing, and Stark is dead, he wishes he could go back to the peace of constant, dream-less slumber, rather than having to live with the pain of the knowledge that he drove a man to the edge of the cliff, then grabbed him by the arc reactor and threw him over.


End file.
